20/08/2013

Transition in Agile Project Life Cycle

After some reading of "Lean  Startup" and "Scaled Agile Framework", I start to think about to add "Transition" as part of project life cycle into our projects. The problems that we have been experiencing are:


  • There is no feedback after projects delivered into production environment
  • Lots of team members treating deploying into production as end of life cycle
  • We have lots of features deployed into some of server for early access purpose, but there is no feedback loop into development team
  • Difference between business values expected to delivered and business values gained, no learning gain from that
From 2 months ago, I have setup portfolio board which outline projects and BAU items in project as a business and start to have in-transition as part of process. What is most important factor we are looking for
  • Mindset that project is only finished when stakeholders/customers gain values from it
  • Build learning culture across business about what we have failed and been succeeded 
  • Extend learning culture from Engineering team to other business departments
  • Early access program which bring a safe-net to delivery team 
  • Help support team and operation team preparing for production 

We are still working towards a better transition period. But most of feedback is positive and we will continue and make it better. There are few things that we have done along the way with feedback
  • Build rhythm for projects in transition too like setting up catchup every week
  • Setup specific page or websites as communicate tools between customers and business when projects in transition stage
  • Dedicated communication channels while projects are in transition to make sure problems solved as soon as possible so that business values can be delivered
  • Stories discovered in transition stage is always treated as highest priority
Please note transition is different from "harden" sprint in many ways. And if you are working towards continuous delivery, you should not have "harden" sprint at all.  At the transition stage, solution is delivered what it designed to do. But it may not fulfill customers' expectation fully or the solutions is deployed to test hypothesis. From transition, we need to learn something and business will grow with the stuff learn from it. 

08/08/2013

Stakeholders and Business People in Your Project/Product Delivery

It has been amazing Agile journey since 2006 when I applied some general agile practice in my own business. And I have seen lots of advantage when business is small and innovative. And it fits with my personal believe that team output can be gain while empowering people. I had been working as owner, project manager and architecture designer at that time. It all works so perfectly because I always brought lead developer with me to talk with customer. As its nature of business, it is easy to get business people and client together with developers. 

But recent experience with SCRUM has given me headache. Product owner has been go-to person for questions related to business. Product owner decision is representative of both clients and business needs. Communication lost cost is high. And my experience has been that product owner acts as middle man in the case they are accountable for product delivered. I personally believe bring stakeholders including customers into table is one of the solution when product owner has decide priority and core requirement. 

What I am doing at the moment? There are few things: 
  1. Identify stakeholders from internal and external in project vision statement
  2. Bring stakeholders in grooming sessions to help developers understanding what customer needs
  3. Product can decide whether it is in scope or not if developer think some changes may requires huge amount of work
I have been pushing vision statement and identify stakeholders for projects. It has bring lots of value into business in which we don't such doc before. And I haven't try 2,3 yet. And planning to do soon. 

If you have some way to involve stakeholders in discussion both before development and after development, please send me or leave as comment